The Centers for Disease Control, just in time for the holidays, are out with a warning to “Say No to Raw Dough,” explaining that cookie dough contains raw eggs that could carry Salmonella bacteria. All of that lurking danger is baked out of the cookies by the high temperatures of the oven.

We’re sorry we have to be the ones to remind the CDC that this is America, and we’ll eat raw cookie dough as we please. The warnings were even enough to inspire the Washington Examiner’s Philip Klein to work up a risk/benefit analysis and conclude that eating raw dough is “probably worth the risk.”

Sure, raw cookie dough could theoretically transmit bacteria. But just 1 in 20,000 eggs has salmonella, and e coli in flour is rare considering we consume 130 lbs of it per person annually. Odds that your batch of cookie dough is contaminated is low https://t.co/JxdhsgW5Ni

The risk of contaminated cookie dough may be higher than zero, but we often engage in behaviors that carry some risk, just bc they're fun. Why should cookie dough be any different? https://t.co/JxdhsgW5Ni